국제화시대 한국교육의 ‘무한경쟁주의’ 극복을 위한 인문학적 성찰

Abstract

This study tries to find out a possible way of overcoming the massive economy-centralism and the endless competitive spirit of Korean contemporary education. Korean current education believes on its readiness of being exported based upon the huge achievement, not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively. The highschool completion ratio of Korean young people at the age of 25-34 is the highest among the OECD nations(97%), and in the area of the higher education, Korea marks the third ranking with the 51%. However, in spite of this enormous sucess, every Korean people is now suffering under the endless competitive spirit of it and its instrumentalism. Therefore, I think we can't export such inhumane spirit, but we have to find out which will be the genuine contribution of Korean education for the improvement of world education. In my view, modern Korean education is made up from the creative encounter of Eastern Confucianism and Western Christianity. From the both spiritual legacies, it has received powerful educational values and spirits. The famous educational fever of Korean people has not to be condemned, but to be purified in order to spread out its belief on the everybody's educational capability and humanity. The most important thing in our modern education seems to me to find out the way to build up an humane strength which can fight against every attempt of inhumanization and inhumane instrumentalism. It is my view that we can earn that possibility more effectively from our long traditional Confucian legacies which impose great emphasis on the inborness of humanity in everyman, and humane relationships and the self-restriction in behalf of other beings. In order to diminish the inhumane character of modern educational practices, we ought to rediscover the spiritual, metaphysical dimension of our education. For this purpose, I think our traditional Confucian concepts of humanbeings are very helpful, and modern Christian understanding of humanbeing can support to spread out that dimension of education.